January 2012

After reminiscing yesterday about my childhood days of snow and sledding, I feel inspired to spend the afternoon sharing a little personal history, which, I assume, many of my readers may know little about...

I grew up in a Jewish home, and I was adopted at birth. I was an only child. I had no siblings. Therefore, understandably, my parents may have spoiled me a little as they had to wait many years to finally adopt a child. They were also order than normal for first time parent. My Dad was 43, and my mother, 38. Both my birth parents were also Jewish. I was raised in the Bronx, which is part of New York City.

My adoptive parents, Nathan and Pearl, were very good to me. They wanted the best for my life. However, for reasons unknown, I was an emotionally troubled child. Raising me was not an easy task; it was a struggle.

Although they always displayed great patience when dealing with my bad behavior, I'm sure I caused them to experience lots of frustration. They were bewildered by my strange ways, and my bouts of depression. I was nothing like the "nice Jewish boy" they had hoped for. I even saw my kindhearted father break down in tears because of the way I treated him.

Now, years later, I regret all the grief and pain I caused my parents by acting the way I did.

My Mother died from cancer when I was fourteen years old. she left this world knowing her troubled son would have to go on without her help. My Dad, too, had to go it alone. I wasn't there for him because much of the time I lived in my own world. I was seldom at home. Always hyperactive, I'd leave our apartment to either hang out all day with friends, or I'd take my 3-speed bicycle and ride off early in the morning and not return until well after dark. At one point my Dad began to nickname me "Stranger" because he seldom saw me. He was lonely and longed for a son's love.

​Yet I had many good times, too. I played a lot of softball, little league baseball and stickball. I loved to collect baseball cards and at one point, had two shoe boxes full of cards. And at least several times every summer I would go with one or more friends to Yankee Stadium. We'd sit high up in the grandstands and watch the game. I loved and idolized all the Yankee's players. But my favorites were Elston Howard, Johnny Blanchard, Bobby Richardson, and of course Micky Mantle. However my all-time favorite Yankee was outfielder Hector Lopez.

​I also loved to swim. I once had the opportunity to become a lifeguard. But I was too undisciplined to train for the test. Sometimes I would help one of the elderly women from my building with her shopping, carrying the bags of groceries for her. While at other times I'd feel anger rising up inside me and I would go and commit a senseless act, of vandalism like break a window. I was a mixed bag of good and bad, and it was all a mystery to me.